Tuesday, July 31, 2012

First, a quick reference to a post in Commentary today, in which a reporter inserts his own biases into a "news" story about Mitt Romney's trip to Israel:

...the crux of the problem for Wilson is identified in the headline: he calls Romney’s comments about Palestinian culture “puzzling.” Because he does not quote anyone in the story calling those comments “puzzling,” it’s clear from the context that Wilson is the puzzled one.

A tried and true media trick: When a representative of a news outlet doesn't agree with a certain position, he will couch his partisanship in phrases such as "people are saying", or "but many people seem to believe the exact opposite". In those cases, the "people" being referenced are merely the reporter himself and his cronies in the lunchroom, and have no connection to real-world, real-life folks whatsoever.

But getting back to the tale in the title of our post...a "puzzled" reporter from the Philadelphia Inquirer, unable to fathom how "people" can see Chris Christie as a "bully" yet still give him massive approval ratings, reaches out to a pollster to explain the discrepancy.

Mainstream media likewise recoil at the personality - although not necessarily the policies - of Chris Christie. Inquirer opinion writers have often pointed out his proclivity to pounce on opponents, while a Courier-Post editorial this month said the governor "represents our state just as poorly as the buffoons on the trashy reality TV shows filmed in the Garden State."

The people of the state don't necessarily disagree....And yet: This supposedly abhorrent creature remains uber-popular. His approval ratings in the state have exceeded 50 percent for a year, with 60 percent of independents approving of the job he's doing. He is already in second place in polls for the Republican Iowa presidential caucuses . . . in 2016.

How is that possible? How can voters approve of a guy they also seem to think is kind of, you know, as Christie would say, a jerk?

"Part of the issue is, voters of New Jersey are probably a little more savvy than reporters," said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute.

Ouch.

"Even if New Jerseyans don't agree with everything that he's done, there's at least a sense that he's trying to shake things up, and that's what he gets credit for," Murray said. "And his outbursts are just part and parcel of that."

It's also a Jersey thing, veteran politicos say.....

"There's a Jersey swagger - not just him, but all New Jerseyans," said Tom Wilson, the state Republican Party's former director. "We kind of have this, 'Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah? Well, $%&*&!' And I think there's a certain Jersey-guy attitude about the governor that people really connect with."

"He is genuine, he is earnest, he is wear-it-on-your-sleeve, he gets angry, he gets emotional . . . They like the fact that he's a real guy."

Seems like Matt Katz has realized, finally, that "the people" in his newsroom and in his profession have very little in common with the larger majority of real people who live and work in the state of New Jersey.

Our intrepid Inquirer reporter isn't totally off the hook, however - he repeats every slam on Christie he can dig up, and opens the story quoting the nastiness of "the state's leading liberal blog" as if it is some type of authority on the governor (which also reveals a bit much about his own opinions get formed).

Still...it's a start. Mr. Katz now has a clue. Which puts him up on about 95% of his profession....

Ideas that stand the test of time are far greater than physical structures that do the same, for they become a permanent flash of brilliance that illuminates the thoughts of the generations of creators that follow.

I give you some words by the great economist Milton Friedman, who would have turned 100 today:

The case for free enterprise, for competition, is that it’s the only system that will keep the capitalists from having too much power. There’s the old saying, “If you want to catch a thief, set a thief to catch him.” The virtue of free enterprise capitalism is that it sets one businessman against another and it’s a most effective device for control.

I think a major reason why intellectuals tend to move towards collectivism is that the collectivist answer is a simple one. If there’s something wrong, pass a law and do something about it.

The two chief enemies of the free society or free enterprise are intellectuals on the one hand and businessmen on the other, for opposite reasons. Every intellectual believes in freedom for himself, but he’s opposed to freedom for others.…He thinks…there ought to be a central planning board that will establish social priorities.…The businessmen are just the opposite—every businessman is in favor of freedom for everybody else, but when it comes to himself that’s a different question. He’s always the special case. He ought to get special privileges from the government, a tariff, this, that, and the other thing…

That's all from 1974, mind you, but he could have spoken those words yesterday, from our liberal elites trying to take over every aspect of our own lives (for our own good, of course) to the rent-seeking GM's and GE's who are working hand-in-hand with the socialist Left in exchange for the government squashing the competition.

Friedman, not surprisingly, was influenced by another philosopher who is holding sway today, many years after her death:

Socialism is not a movement of the people. It is a movement of the intellectuals, originated, led and controlled by the intellectuals, carried by them out of their stuffy ivory towers into those bloody fields of practice where they unite with their allies and executors: the thugs
~Ayn Rand

“Indeed, a major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it...gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”

The U.S. economy is capable of very good growth provided the government keeps its hands off. Unfortunately, there’s a strong propensity for the government to do things that are harmful rather than helpful..The function of the entrepreneur is to take risks, and if he’s forced not to take risks and to spend on accountants rather than products, the economy is not going to expand or grow.

Somewhere, one Barack Hussein Obama grows red with rage, as he is proven again to be at best an intellectual dilettante, at worst a fool.

And somewhere else, Paul Krugman turns green with envy, as he realizes none of the inane rubbish that spews forth from his obscene piehole will ever be treated with the respect or reverence given to the philosophies of "Uncle Milt"...

Monday, July 30, 2012

How else can we takethis phrase from her Sunday "column" on Mitt Romney?

Even though the Mormon doesn’t drink coffee, he has measured out his life in coffee spoons, limiting access to reporters, giving interviews mostly to Fox News, hiding personal data, resisting putting out concrete policy proposals, refusing to release tax returns, trimming his conscience to match the moment, avoiding spontaneity...

Doesn't bother you? How about a piece about a Jewish candidate in which we could read "Even though the Jew doesn't eat bacon, he's brought it home...."

Or how about an op-ed on the current occupant of the White House which contained, "Even though this Negro doesn't go to church..."

Don't worry, I can hear you plain as day - Stop it! Stop it! That is just so offensive! You're horrible!

It's OK that you feel that way. I just would like to assume that you take the same umbrage at Miss Dowd's revolting choice of words as well.

Because it seems as if the entirety of American liberalism feels that it is OK to refer to the man who may be the future president of the United States in this manner. And I cannot for the life of me understand it, unless there is some kind of a tremendous, unprecedented double-standard at work here....

Mayor Bloomberg is pushing hospitals to hide their baby formula behind locked doors so more new mothers will breast-feed.

Starting Sept. 3, the city will keep tabs on the number of bottles that participating hospitals stock and use — the most restrictive pro-breast-milk program in the nation.

Under the city Health Department’s voluntary Latch On NYC initiative, 27 of the city’s 40 hospitals have also agreed to give up swag bags sporting formula-company logos, toss out formula-branded tchotchkes like lanyards and mugs, and document a medical reason for every bottle that a newborn receives...

With each bottle a mother requests and receives, she’ll also get a talking-to. Staffers will explain why she should offer the breast instead.

Lovely. So not only will Mike Bloomberg and his merry band of statists play hide-the-bottle to force one to breastfeed, but those who don’t get with the program will be nagged until they do — “We know what’s best for your baby. You don’t. Why do you insist on a bottle? WHY DO YOU HATE YOUR BABY??”

That’s the essence of liberal fascism, of the nanny-state, of arrogant would-be Czars like Mike Bloomberg: there is no limit, no point at which they say they control enough. Every minute aspect of your life –how much salt you use, how much soda you drink, how you feed your baby– is subject to the state’s direction.

Every. Single. Bit.

So, getting back to my original question, posed in the post header....I would have expected an uproar over Nanny B's latest dictate, as it inserts government control over a woman's rights to choose what she believes is best for her child from the moment of birth. Now woman, no matter what physical/psychological issues they may have, will be forced to breastfeed, or risk government intervention. And once the government has their foot in the door, well, their may be a lot about your family they may decide is imperfect, and need changing...

But nothing but crickets (so far). Can it actually be that the whole pro-abortion movement was never about a larger issue - the right of a woman to be free to make any choice she wished involving her own body - but simply about the liberal politics of the moment? And being that today, the liberal politics of the moment are about exercising more and more control over a citizen's body for the "good of the state", could it be that the feminist movement has abandoned its most powerful slogan in order to help the Left move forward with its goal of government-run health care?

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Ever see a guy with lung cancer light up a cigarette? Yeah, me too. More than once. And it is one of the saddest things I've ever seen, because it's never done as a "f*ck you" response to fate, it's simply the act of a person who knows what they are doing is killing them, and yet absolutely cannot stop themselves. Even when their very existence is at stake.

Newsweek will eventually transition to an online publication, owner IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI) said today, marking the beginning of the end for the money-losing magazine’s 79-year run as a print weekly.

IAC Chairman Barry Diller made the announcement during a quarterly conference call, saying the New York-based company aims to curb investments in the business. Newsweek is projected to lose as much as $22 million this year, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

Admitting his struggling network “needs new thinking,” CNN President Jim Walton said Friday he will step down at the end of the year.
..the showcase TV franchise in the U.S. has plummeted from domination to a distant third in the cable news race.

CNN’s U.S. ratings fell about 35% in the second quarter. It now trails not only runaway cable news leader Fox News, but MSNBC, whose prime-time shows of late have routinely been doubling the audience for CNN.

Citing an Obama campaign official, the newspaper recently reported that the Massachusetts Senate candidate – and liberal darling – is under consideration for the high-profile speaking assignment.

Giving Warren a national audience from Time Warner Cable Arena could possibly help her campaign to unseat U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, the Massachusetts Republican who succeeded the late U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.

Warren, a Harvard Law School professor, got praise (from liberals) and criticism (from conservatives) for her tough comments about Wall Street during her time heading a congressional panel created to oversee the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

Because after four years of being spoken down to by Barack Obama, there is nothing that will enthuse the American people more than being spoken down to by a finger-pointing, shrieking harpy. Nothing will re-invigorate the feeling of "hope" more than hearing the shrill voice of the woman who originated the "You didn't build that!" meme. And nothing will bring the American people back to the Democratic fold more than a pinch-faced academic aristocrat who will declare that the problem with America over the past four years is that we haven't fought class warfare hard enough, and that we haven't taxed job creators anywhere near the government's capacity to absorb it.

The fact that the Democrats can even be considering Warren for this primo speaking slot - after Obama's adaptation of her themes caused a national uproar - shows how utterly out of touch they are with the nation's values.

The moment she steps to the podium, the entirety of America will realize this as well.

Saturday, July 28, 2012

We thought this was the kind of stuff they only did in places like North Korea - throwing extravagant, lascivious mega-events while the population starved.

Seems like the West is morphing in the direction too, as the British government seems intent on using the London Olympics as the ultimate "shiny object" to distract the people from their onrushing doom. The New York Times, shockingly, makes the point, albeit with a coat of sugar:

That the Olympics come at a time of deep economic malaise, with Britain teetering on the edge of a double-dip recession, the government cutting billions of dollars from public spending, and Europe lurching from crisis to crisis, made the scene a bit surreal, even defiant in the face of so much adversity.

The crowd in the stadium sat in a bubble of excitement...But out in the rest of the country, critics have been questioning the expense, the ubiquitously heavy-handed security apparatus, and the rampant commercialism of the Games.

Tax dollars, wisely spent

In The Guardian, the columnist Marina Hyde said government officials appeared to be rashly depending on the Olympics, which cost an estimated £9.3 billion (or $14.6 billion), to save the country’s struggling economy virtually single-handedly.

Referring to a British track-and-field star, Ms. Hyde wrote that according to the government’s thinking, “Jessica Ennis winning gold is no longer merely a sporting aspiration but something that would cause a massive and immediate recalibration of the balance of payments.”

And, like all government-funded projects, the Opening Ceremonies had more than their share of Lefty propaganda:

The ceremony, too, reflected the deeply left-leaning sensibilities of Mr. Boyle. It pointedly included trade union members among a parade of people celebrating political agitators from the past, a parade that also included suffragists, Afro-Caribbean immigrants who fought for minority rights, and the Jarrow hunger marchers, who protested against unemployment in 1936...Aiden Burley, a Conservative member of Parliament,denounced on Twitter what he referred to as the ceremony’s “leftie multicultural” content.

“The most leftie opening ceremony I have ever seen — more than Beijing, the capital of a communist state!” he posted grumpily.

(more atLegal Insurrction, including a dance to celebrate...the NHS? Obama is taking notes, no doubt...)

But it's not just the politicians. A more typical complaint in the comment section of a Sun UK piece about the lavish, $27M+ opening ceremonies:

This whole circus is a monument to stupidity and a complete waste of public money. If politicians tell us that they are interested in our health, why are they spending a disproportionate amout of public money to bolster the commercial interests of the world's professional athletes and future white elephant stadiums and venues when the money should be distributed for the benefit of all British people's sports and recreation. This nonesense encourages couch potatoes to watch TV who then drink and smoke whilst the government collects more tax with the expectation that people's life expectancies are diminished thus reducing the time they could be expected to receive pensions...

Jeesh. Guy almost sounds like a...Tea Partier, or something.

You think the Brits are resentful now? Wait until the Games are over, the lights are turned out, and the newly-built stadiums are left empty to rot, all while their taxes continue to rise, their rights continue to shrink, and their prospects begin to look not dissimilar to a certain Korean state...

The British government is hoping the ultimate shiny object will blind the people to their depressed standard of living. Me, I'm not so sure that's gonna work...

Friday, July 27, 2012

...and doing a much more thorough job than the mainstream media ever did, or ever will.

You want to know the man behind the genteel countenance, the smooth speaking voice, the facade of moderation? Obama's recent "unplugged" moments have done a better job of stripping the man down and revealing his bare, nasty little soul than any half-hearted investigative journalist would have.

Beneath the visage of a cosmetically populist, post-racial, post-partisan reformer who wants to “perfect” America and to have “millionaires and billionaires” “pay their fair share” is just another condescending, self-important, sarcastic, academic liberal Democrat, who believes in false consciousness and in scholastic theories that success in life can be attributed to birth or luck or community but not to individual effort and grit. Obama may be talented at self-fashioning, but he cannot maintain his public face constantly. The mask sometimes slips.

The real Obama emerges. He lets loose in the self-consciously ironic and pretentiously omniscient argot of the American ruling class, lecturing audiences in what he, Elizabeth Warren, and the segment producers at MSNBC treat as the new catechism.

Obama’s impromptu rhetoric is laced with the arch, dry, and bitter humor of the liberal bourgeois who write our newspapers and magazines and books and Comedy Central “news” shows. This is the cynical and snarky voice that informs comments such as “You’re likeable enough” and “the election’s over” and, at the June 13, 2011, meeting of the president’s jobs council, “Shovel ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected.”

...now if this kind of incident happened at a Muslim summer camp, or a black one, the media would be running with it wall-to-wall; chin-stroking pundits and opportunistic politicians would fret over the unquenchable hatred in the hearts of the American people ("I think all of us have to do some soul searching to figure out how does something like this happen" is what Barack Obama said in what appeared at first to be a similar circumstance), and rabble-rousers would be calling for marches, teach-ins, and "days of rage".

Five people face charges for allegedly terrorizing a Jewish summer camp in Pennsylvania.

In three separate episodes earlier this month, three adults and two juveniles caused property damage as they sped dangerously through Camp Bonim in Wayne County in a pickup truck, shouting anti-Semitic epithets and firing paintball guns at campers and staff, District Attorney Janine Edwards said in a press release. The three adults were arrested Wednesday morning and face felony and misdemeanor charges, including ethnic intimidation, terroristic threats and assault.

"These children were terrorized and in fear for their lives by the actions of this group," Edwards said in the release. "The vicious, cruel and obscene nature of the language hurled at the campers is unspeakable. Luckily none of the children suffered any serious physical injury, however, the emotional damage is immeasurable."

Police said [accused perpetrator] Mark Trail then yelled racial slurs such as "You f***ing Jews go back where you came from" and "I'm gonna kill you, you f***ing Jews." During that episode, 18-year-old camper Alan Rosen was struck in the leg by a shot from a paintball gun while walking near the camp's synagogue, according to the affidavit, filed by Pennsylvania State Trooper John Decker.

Tyler Cole Spencer, 18, Mark Trail, 21, Cassandra Robertson, 18

At around 2:30 a.m. the next morning, campers saw the group doing "360s" in the camp's quad area before the truck came chasing after one of them, according to the affidavit. The campers told police the truck only missed them by about 10 feet...

Common, perhaps, in other parts of the world. Fairly new to the American scene, though.

Emanuel shrugged off concerns, but that's way for him to do, as he has a private army of his own. But imagine being a Jew in Chicago - an unarmed Jew, by order of Mayor Rahm - and seeing the equivalent of Nazi brownshirts marching down your street, in the name of "protection".

Farrakhan:How many of you are lawyers? Only have one in the house? No wonder we go to jail so much, brother! But at the top of the law profession, who are the top in law?

Audience: Jews.

Farrakhan:Sorry I didn’t hear you.

Audience:Jews!!

Farrakhan:Any doctors in the house? Ain’t got no doctors? Oh there’s one way in the back. At the top of the medical profession, the top in that are members of the Jewish community. Anybody in media? Who’s the top in that field?

Audience: Jews.

Farrakhan: Anybody a rapper in the house? There’s rappers. You can rap, ain’t nothing wrong with that, but at the top of that are those that control the industry. Any of you have Hollywood ambitions, Broadway ambitions? Who’s the top of that?

Audience:Jews.

Farrakhan: Same people! They’re masters in business. Well I’m not a businessman I’m a banker. Well who’s the master of the bankers?

Audience:Jews.

Farrakhan:TALK TO ME!

Audience:Jews!!

Somewhere in Chicago, there is a Jew still stupid enough to vote Democratic. He'll deserve the beating he gets from Rahm Emanuel's newest henchmen...

Onetime architect of the Barack Obama White House, now Mayor of Chicago - one of the most violent, crime-ridden cities in America - Rahm Emanuel is the personification of the morality and philosophy of the Democratic party circa 2012. With two deft moves, he encapsulates where the party of the Left is going - and attempting to take all of us.

First, the destruction of the Constitution. You've seen Obama shred it, now watch Rahm ignore the First Amendment as he block Chick-Fil-A from expanding in Chicago simply because their ownership holds - gasp! - conservative social views:

“Chick-fil-A’s values are not Chicago values. They’re not respectful of our residents, our neighbors and our family members. And if you’re gonna be part of the Chicago community, you should reflect Chicago values,” Emanuel said Wednesday.

“What the CEO has said as it relates to gay marriage and gay couples is not what I believe, but more importantly, it’s not what the people of Chicago believe. We just passed legislation as it relates to civil union and my goal and my hope … is that we now move on recognizing gay marriage. I do not believe that the CEO’s comments … reflects who we are as a city.”

Remember, Chick-Fil-A has never been accused of any anti-gay discrimination in its hiring or serving practices. Their president simply affirmed he supports traditional marriage (which the linked Sun-Times article refers to as "anti-gay views" in its opening sentence!), which is apparently now enough for a Democrat to ban you from their jurisdiction.

Agree with them, serve them, or be run out of town, and out of business. Thuggish much?

Ignoring Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan’s history of anti-Semitic remarks, Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday welcomed the army of men dispatched to the streets by Farrakhan to stop the violence in Chicago neighborhoods.

Ald. Debra Silverstein (50th), an Orthodox Jew, has said it’s good that Farrakhan is “helping” in the fight against crime, “but it doesn’t eradicate the comments that he’s made about the Jewish community.”

Or put more broadly, there is no freedom of thought in liberalism. And Jews are simply money spigots, and disposable ones at that. Certainly allowing the city to of Chicago be "patrolled" by an army of anti-Semetic thugs should make that clear to even the dimmest Jew.

This is not a unique worldview to Rahm Emanuel. It is held by virtually all Democrats, from Barack Obama on down.

Remember, the German people originally voted the Nazis into power, while ignoring some of the virtually identical warning signs. We repeat history at our peril...

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

But don't worry, he's just as much of a traditional American as you or I. And if you don't believe that, you're a bitter, clinging racist scumbag.

And speaking of which...I have trouble believing this. Via the Weekly Standard, we get a peak into a Monday night Obama fundraiser in Portland, Oregon:

“I want to thank someone who put so much work into this event, Terry Bean," President Obama said as the crowd began to cheer. "Give Terry a big round of applause.”

Terry Bean is, according to the New York Post, a "gay-porn kingpin."

"Oneof the 'bundlers' who has raised $50,000 to $100,000 for the Barack Obama presidential campaign is Terrence Bean, who once controlled the biggest producer of gay porn in America," the Post reported in 2008, during the president's first run the office. "Bean, the first gay on Sen. Obama's National Finance Committee, is the sole trustee of the Charles M. Holmes Foundation, which owned Falcon Studios, Jock Studios and Mustang Studios, the producers of about $10 million worth of all-male pornography a year."

Falcon Studios profits from the sale of "barebacking" videos, featuring anal sex without condoms. Falcon insists that the videos were made before AIDS hit in the early 1980s...

Yeah, as American as apple pie. In Obama's world, that is. No doubt, should the president be re-elected, some of Bean's client's work will end up in classrooms across the nation, as a new liberal curriculum will demand instruction on gay sex as well as natural heterosexual intercourse. And we know this administration never fails to reward an, ahem, "investor" in the president...

Photo of Obama taken at Oregon fundraiser organized by Terry Bean?

What I found even more shocking is that the mainstream media - save for a few outlets like the Post - didn't report on the Barack Obama/gay porn connection at all.

Just kidding. That's about the only aspect of this story that didn't surprise me. In the meanwhile, let's join the president in giving a big round of applause to unhygienic, exploitative gay pornography. After all, by supporting the Obama administration, haven't they proved themselves to be more patriotic than we are?

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

WNEW News reports that Holmes was awarded a prestigious grant from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. NIH is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
It gave the graduate student a $26,000 stipend and paid his tuition for the highly competitive neuroscience program at the University of Colorado in Denver. Holmes was one of six neuroscience students at the school to get the grant money.

So that's where an unemployed college kid got the money for 6,000 rounds of ammo and the ingredients for enough explosives to blow up his entire apartment building - the f*cking government.

That's where your tax dollars are going: To madmen bent on slaughter.

In China, if they kill a dissident, they send his family the bill for the bullets used to execute him. In America, the government takes that money up front, and you just gotta hope you're not in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not quite sure that's a real improvement....

Of course, there is always another explanation besides sheer bureaucratic laziness, stupidity and carelessness: Perhaps the government does these thingsintentionally, in order to move the public towards an acceptance of greater gun control.

While the older generation of secular American Jews trudge dutifully to their polling places and vote Democratic religiously (pun intended), younger Jews brought up in increasingly more conservative households and synagogues are taking a right turn.

And the hotbed of this little revolution is in the outer boroughs of New York - Brooklyn and Queens, where Bob Turner (OK, an older Jewish guy) took Anthony Weiner's seat (the first Republican elected in the district since the Roaring '20's), and where young neophyte David Storobin ( a Russian Jew) took a State Senate seat away from the be-knighted son of the local Democratic Club.

Significant, because another young Jewish neophyte is running for State Senate in Brooklyn. The difference here is that...she's sexy and she knows it:

An ultra-tan and, like, totally cool 22-year-old from Brooklyn is running for state Senate, landing on the usually stuffed-shirt political scene in an explosion of pink and bling — and sporting a Web site that’s more “Legally Blonde” than “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

“I’m Senator and I Know It,” newbie candidate Mindy Meyer’s Web site declares in tricked-out letters as an instrumental version of LMFAO’s “Sexy and I Know It” plays.
The clearly fun-loving, Orthodox Jewish law-school student cites Rudy Giuliani as her political idol....

In another photo, she’s holding a bow and arrow as Katniss from the “Hunger Games,” alongside her position on poverty and unemployment: “No more ‘Hunger Games’ in our district!”

Meyer may be a political neophyte, but “I can tell you one thing, I have no experience in corruption,” says the Touro College alum, who majored in political science.

Running as a Republican and Conservative, Meyer will face Democratic incumbent Kevin Parker.
Parker didn’t return calls from The Post but told the Web site City & State he’s taking her campaign seriously.

“Every challenge is a credible challenge,” he said. “This is the American democratic process, but I don’t know Ms. Meyer at all. She is rather young.”

But her candidacy is making Brooklyn’s Conservative Party chairman very happy.
“She’s a law-school student, she’s extremely intelligent, she is very focused on this race, and I’m excited to have a candidate who’s getting all this attention!” gushed Jerry Kassar.

Mindy is keepin' it real....

Gothamistclaims Mindy has raised over $12,000 so far for her campaign, and says (on her site, currently overwhelmed with traffic) that she "intends to utilize her religious values and moral compass as her guide."

Realistically - it is unlikely Mindy will win (although I am sure David Storobin was told he couldn't win either, until...he won). But her candidacy represents part of the new wave of young Jewish conservatives - a movement that may not make themselves overly apparent in the 2012 election, but who will take a different political path than their parents.

Time for Republicans to start wooing the Mindy Meyers of the world. The next election may turn on them....

Yeah, I know - every time Nanny Bloomberg gets another grand idea, we lose a little piece of our freedom. But this time, in his hyper-reaction to the Aurora Massacre, he's actually come up with something I can work with..

“I don’t understand why police officers across this country don’t stand up collectively and say we’re going to go on strike, we’re not going to protect you unless you, the public, through your legislature, do what’s required to keep us safe,’’ he told CNN’s Piers Morgan.

“Police officers want to go home to their families. And we’re doing everything we can to make their job more difficult, but more importantly, more dangerous, by leaving guns in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them and letting people who have those guns buy things like armor piercing bullets.’’

Sure, it sounds as if Nanny B. is asking America's police offers to blackmail the citizens they have sworn to protect - literally at gunpoint: Pass laws that will leave yourself defenseless, save for us, or we will no longer defend you.

But I think it's a swell idea. Let every cop in America walk out. While I have great respect for many of them, especially in New York City (the best police force in the world, bar none), on balance they are the #1 usurper of constitutional liberties on a daily basis in this nation. Don't believe me? Read The Agitator, but take your blood pressure medication first...

With no one left to enforce the law, I will buy myself an arsenal of weaponry - all the stuff that is impossible to get your hands on in New Jersey. I will carry, and I will be safer than I ever was in my life. Once the populace is armed, and the penalty for pulling a stickup becomes a bullet to the head, crime will drop, just like it does in every state with relaxed gun possession/carry laws.

And without having to pay a police force, or their health benefits and salaries, a tremendous amount of money will be saved by thinly-stretched metropolises nationwide as well, just by shifting some "public" responsibilities back onto the private citizen.

Of course, I doubt this is the outcome that Bloomberg had in mind. But liberals' grand ideas always turn into epic disasters, and the public always winds up screwed, with less than they previously had at a higher cost than ever. Liberals defend themselves by claiming "good intentions", but that's what the road to hell is paved with, as they conveniently forget.

But this one may turn out to be a win for the common man after all. Keep it up, Bloomy, and petition those cops to strike - I'm going to start saving my money now, there's a Desert Eagle .44 Magnum that I've been eyeing for a long time...

Monday, July 23, 2012

After the spate of baseless accusations claiming Aurora gunman James Holmes was a member of the Tea Party,. I hesitate to report on speculation. However, should the connection between Holmes and OWS bear out, the media will frantically try to cover it up, so as to protect themselves and other Occupy supporters such as Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi. Based on that eventuality, I figure let's throw the evidence out there, without making a declarative statement, and let's see what happens next. Not really brave, I suppose, but better than turning away in fear from the next Occupy march....

You want a motivation for James Holmes' murderous rampage during the midnight showing of Batman? Here's one, from PI Bill Warner:

Based on my investigation of the Occupy Black Bloc terrorists, that began in November of 2011, and my interaction with Occupy Movement members in Florida, it is my opinion that James E. Holmes fits the profile of a 20 something Black Bloc terrrorist and that his shooting up of the Aurora Co movie theater was payback for the Batman movie slaming the OWS.

Hmmm...certainly, some people really do have their nose out of joint about the way the Occupy movement has been portrayed (accurately?) in The Dark Knight Rises. Is the Aurora attack a friendly warning from the harder edge of the Occupation that cultural dissent from the party line will be punishable by death?

A black bloc is a tactic for protests and marches, whereby individuals wear black clothing, scarves, ski masks, motorcycle helmets with padding, or other face-concealing items.[...] The clothing is used to avoid being identified, and to, theoretically, appear as one large mass, promoting solidarity.

A tactic that the organizer of OWS appeared to endorse. But where's the proof that Holmes was Black Bloc?

Check out the beginning of thisvideo, where for a short time Occupy seemed to claim Holmes as their own. Certainly Holmes dressed the part as well. His behavior certainly would bein character;the “Black Bloc” faction of Occupy has targeted law enforcement in other instances, and three members of the group are facing charges of attempting to kill cops in Chicago. It has become clear the “booby-trapping” of his apartment with trip wires and bombs was intended to kill the most likely next persons to enter that apartment, namely law enforcement.

So Holmes had a motivation, he dressed the part & played the part, but where is the smoking gun? Where is the definite photo/blog post tying him, as currently rumored, to Occupy San Diego?

Currently, there is none. Which doesn't mean it doesn't exist, only that is hasn't been discovered. Yet.

If it turns out that the individual had ever participated in any Occupy activity, along with millions of Americans, in a unique forum where NO ONE was denied the chance to contribute, then it means as little about the Occupy movement as the many acts of violence connected to known Tea Party supporters mean about the Tea Party movement's goals.

Actually, it means LESS, since Tea Party sympathizers have been found trying to bomb the border after hearing calls for landmines along the Rio Grande at a Phoenix Tea Party formal speech, for example, whereas the Occupy movement has always stood TOTALLY AGAINST ALL VIOLENCE against people, in every statement, every GA and among the organizers of every major event.

Well, the last sentence in that statement is false, even though they add the disclaimer "against people", so as to keep their street cred with Occupy Oakland. Still, see below...are cops not people? Ask James Holmes, I suppose...

THIS WAS STAGE, THEY WANT TO PASS THE UN TREATY, IN TWO WEEK”S OBAMA WILL WANT TO TAKE ALL YOUR GUNS, AWAY FROM YOU. I FEEL FOR ALL THAT HAVE LOST THEIR LOVE ONE”S I DON”T TRUST ANY GOVERNMENT THESE DAY”S THEY WILL DO ANY THING TO HAVE CONTROL OVER US. AND IT IS COMING SOON. I FEAR FOR THOSE WHO ARE RAISING CHILDREN IN THIS DAY, LIVING IN DANGEROUS TIMES.

While most of the reviews of "The Dark Knight Rises" have been positive, the opinions haven't been unanimous. Seems as if there's a certain...type of person who hasn't found the film to their liking. And it's not because they don't enjoy movies with violence, looting, and mayhem. Lord, no!

They just hate when those action are ascribed to their side.

Kurt Loder - former Rolling Stone editor and deliverer of dramatic headlines from the world of music as anchor of MTV news - lashes out at the final flick of the Batman trilogy. Won't take you long to figure out why, either. Via R.S. McCain:

The film is thick with politics of an obliviously nonsensical sort. In an attempt to lend the tale contemporary resonance, the script (by director Nolan and his brother, Jonathan) positions Bane as a self-declared revolutionary, come to liberate Gotham from its oppression by the city’s wealthy upper crust (the One Percent, if it need be said). But Bane is so clearly a vicious nihilist—he empties the municipal prison, arms the freed inmates, sets up kangaroo courts—that it’s not at all clear why the inexplicably angry populace (they’re living in a city scrubbed crime-free after the death of Harvey Dent—what is their problem?) would so ecstatically rally to him. Members of the real-world Occupy movement may bristle at being thus depicted, even at second hand, as witless sheep.

I think that Loder has come up with the best description of the denizens of Zuccotti park and elsewhere - "witless sheep".

"My hate is about to be expressed as projectile vomiting...!!"

Loder's tone seems almost petulant, that his pet cause isn't in fact given the solemn respeect it deserves, but instead is fictionalized to meet the needs of a dramatic production.

Just like Republicans and their ideas were/are in HBO movies/series such as Game Change, The Newsroom, and Recount. Just as George Bush and the Iraq war were in the slew ofpoorly -attended movies Hollywood churned out during his administration [In the Valley of Elah (2007) Redacted (2007)The Kingdom (2007) Rendition (2007) Lions for Lambs(2007) Home of the Brave (2006) and Stop Loss (2008)]. Just like ordinary conservative citizens are in TV shows like "Law and Order", or on ABC News.

Will Loder realize what he's feeling now is what conservatives feel every day, when we watch the news, listen to the radio, or read the paper? Will he feel empathy with our despair at seeing our views being intentionally distorted in order to meet a prefabricated, fictional storyline? Will he wake up to the greater injustice?

Nah. He's a witless sheep, after all. He'll pause to get his breath, then begin bleating once again, clueless to the irony of his complaint...

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Some people are surprised bythis story, but Jersey's favorite party girl has always been tight with the Right:

On the “Tonight Show” last night, Jay Leno presiding, Newt Gingrich and Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi met cute....out of deference to the Snook’s one-name only status, only nicknames were exchanged: “Newt, Snooki. Snooki, Newt,” Leno said. The coziness escalated from there...As Snooki, in her matter-of-fact, controlled, “I’ll tell you anything you want to know and anything you don’t want to know” way, updated Jay on her pregnancy, her breasts, her marriage plans, Newt leaned forward — friendly, curious, hanging on every word. The two are now tweeting at each other and have bequeathed the world this picture.

Newt offered, “Congratulations on having two New York Times’ best-sellers.” To which Snooki smiled and replied, “Thank you. We’re trying to be you like you.” Later on, Jay asked, “Newt do you drink?” When Newt responded with an affirmative, Snooki offered praise, “Good for you!”

But this is not the first time Snooks has displayed her conservative bona fides...she was out in front of the pack in calling out Barack Obama's Obamacare taxation, and suggesting a racist motivation. FromJune 2010:

“I don’t go tanning-tanning anymore because Obama put a 10 percent tax on tanning, and I feel like he did that intentionally for us,” Snooki says. “McCain would never put a 10 percent tax on tanning because he’s pale and he would probably want to be tan.”

Which starter a twitter friendship between the old Vietnam War hero and the daughter he wishes he had....

But Snooki's finest moment had to be this insulting diss of Senator Chuck Schumer, who was hoping to get some face-time from the diminutive dilettante and wound up eating her dust, as she refused to even look at him:

....an historic near-encounter captured live as it happened this morning at Reagan National Airport. In one corner: An obnoxious camera whore who represents everything that’s wrong with America. In the other corner: Snooki. Which one of them is capable of naming all three branches of government?

I'm not saying she should get a speaking slot at the convention (yet). But if we really are a big tent, and we want to draw in new voters, we'd best allow Snooki inside. And hope she brings the party with her...

Friday, July 20, 2012

If you own a business — that, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Iternet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

In 1973, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) initiated a research program to investigate techniques and technologies for interlinking packet networks of various kinds. The objective was to develop communication protocols which would allow networked computers to communicate transparently across multiple, linked packet networks. This was called the Internetting project and the system of networks which emerged from the research was known as the "Internet."

DARPA is certainly government funded, but to claim the government created the internet is like claiming the federal government won the Second World War. Obama's proposed budget, by the way, would have made cuts to DARPA and related projects being developed under its auspices. .No more men on the moon, no more Internets. I suppose.

Oh - and the "why":

The Internet was designed to provide a communications network that would work even if some of the major sites were down. If the most direct route was not available, routers would direct traffic around the network via alternate routes.

Should there be a military, nuclear, or natural disaster, communications between/within the military, sciences, and the government could be kept open with this newfangled "internet".

Commerce was never in the minds of non-governmental scientist who created the thing. Thus, the president's statement that "Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet" is 100% false.

Ignorant much, Mr. Obama? Were this a Bush speech, it would be hailed as evidence of his stupidity. Instead, the media is helping push the "taken out of context" meme, and whitewashing the president's shocking historical inaccuracies.

The truth is that Mr. Obama has never been a deep thinker. We shouldn't be surprised because "liberalism" itself is just an incoherent grab bag of half-baked ideas....

[Obama] was president of the Harvard Law Review without ever having published an article....Writing brings clarity to our thoughts. We have nothing in this regard from our president because he has never thought about anything in depth or questioned the basis for his ideas. His is a juvenile mind full of semi-coherent nonsense.

Mr. Romney needs to force the president off message. If Mr. Obama starts thinking out loud again, the gaffes will follow. He's no philosopher king. It's time he was exposed for the muddled thinker he is.

That's assuming, of course, that there are people who want to expose him, as opposed to covering up for him...

When the late Senator Ted Kennedy heard in 1968 that the pioneering Massachusetts company BBN had won the ARPA contract for an "interface message processor (IMP)," he sent a congratulatory telegram to BBN for their ecumenical spirit in winning the "interfaith message processor" contract.

Shades of the Tuscon massacre all over again, when it was first Sarah Palin, then the Tea Party, then Republicans in general that were responsible for the actions of a murderous madman.

Getting back to the question I pose in the title of this post - why does the media always pick the same scapegoat?

Well, they already know that blaming guns is a no-go. Even our leftist president won't go there any longer.

Who else could be blamed, if one were looking at these murders as symptoms of an underlying cause rather than unconnected, individual actions?

Why, you could blame...Hollywood. And the entertainment industry as a whole, for churning out so much violence, bloodshed, and mayhem, all cheapening the value of life, while offering precious little positive, life-affirming fare.

What an easy target (pardon the pun). Especially in an election year. Uh-oh...

So that blame must be deflected, and in a hurry. At the very least, it puts the heat on another party who must now defend themselves, while Big Liberal Hollywood hides out, wiping the sweat off its brow and cooling their heels nervously, until it is safe to come back out.

So who you gonna scapegoat? Who else, but a group that is hated by Hollywood, and who is guaranteed to be attacked at the slightest provocation by a mainstream media who loathes them with an equal intensity?

The Tea Party. Or Republicans. Or conservatives in general.

Tuscon wasn't the end. On the contrary, it worked. So expect to see it repeated every time there is a tragedy of this sort in America.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Watching the classic Rodney Dangerfield flick, I was stuck by this piece of dialogue....the wealthy self-made Thornton, wanting to enter college but having no credentials, comes up with a way most acceptable to the Dean...paying for a new "Melon School of Business". The interaction between Melon and a snotty Economics professor at the groundbreaking is classic, and one can imagine Dr. Philip Barbay replaced quite easily by one Professor Barack Hussein Obama:

Dean Martin:[Barbay has arrived at the groundbreaking of the new Melon School of Business] Ah, Phillip... so glad you could make it. Mr. Melon, this is Dr. Phillip Barbay. He's the dean of our new Melon School of Business.

Dr. Phillip Barbay: [Thornton extends his hand, Barbay refuses it and takes Martin aside] David, I just want to get it on record that I am totally against this. I don't think that selling admission to an obviously unqualified student is either ethical or honorable.

Dr. Phillip Barbay: [glaring at Martin in dismay] It's a simple matter of undermining the efforts of our best students, who are here as the result of hard work!

Thornton Melon: [chiming in] Hard work? Listen, Sherlock! While you were tucked away up here working on your ethics, I was out there busting my hump in the REAL world. And the reason guys like you got a place to teach is 'cause guys like me donate buildings.

Wish somebody had schooled Obama like that when he was pontificating at Harvard - reminding him, while he was lecturing (or protesting) in some fancy hall, thathe didn't build it -somebody else (most likely a - gasp! capitalist!) did.

But maybe it's not too late. I would love to see a businessman with enough cojones to stand up before Barack Obama and remind the president that the only reason he has any government money to spend at all is because of guys like him, who go out and bust their hump in the real world every day - not by playing golf, giving speeches, and voting "present".

Wish I could find the clip from the scene above. Still, there is this one, in which Thornton Melon repeatedly interrupts Dr. Barbay's economics lecture, mocking his naivete and instructing the professor on how economics works in the real world, and not on the chalkboard.

Obama needed to be schooled like this a long time ago. Maybe today, he'd have a clue:

‎"Businessmen are the symbol of a free society—the symbol of America. If and when they perish, civilization will perish. But if you wish to fight for freedom, you must begin by fighting for its unrewarded, unrecognized, unacknowledged, yet best representatives—the American businessmen." - Ayn Rand. Atlas Shrugged Part II

...look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else... If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen- Barack Obama, July 13th, 2012

"The skyline of New York is a monument of a splendor that no pyramids or palaces will ever equal or approach. But America's skyscrapers were not built by public funds nor for a public purpose: they were built by the energy, initiative and wealth of private individuals for personal profit. And, instead of impoverishing the people, these skyscrapers, as they rose higher and higher, kept raising the people's standard of living ..."
-Ayn Rand

When President Barack Obama hauled off and slapped American small-business owners in the mouth the other day, I wanted to dream of my father.

There was no federal bailout money for us...

Just two immigrant brothers and their families risking everything, balancing on the economic high wire, building a business in America. They sacrificed, paid their bills, counted pennies to pay rent and purchase health care and food and not much else. And for their troubles they were muscled by the politicos, by the city inspectors and the chiselers and the weasels, all those smiling extortionists who held the government hammer over all of our heads.

[Obama]offers an American dream much different from my father's. Open your eyes and you can see it too. He stands there at the front of the mob, in his shirt sleeves, swinging that government hammer, exhorting the crowd to use its votes and take what it wants.
-John Kass (via Ricochet)

Socialism is not a movement of the people. It is a movement of the intellectuals, originated, led and controlled by the intellectuals, carried by them out of their stuffy ivory towers into those bloody fields of practice where they unite with their allies and executors: the thugs.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Used to be a time when subway cars were plastered with ads for laser wart removal, technical schools, and transitory street fashion. But in the latest chapter of Change You Can Believe In, we see more and more of ads such as these:

Taken on the E Train, 7/18/12

Give Obama another four years, and I have no doubt what this girl will be willing to pawn in order to get some cash to pay the bills. And those ads, too, will be all over the subways, in a nod to the new "reality" that was never poor Obama's fault to begin with....

If you don/'t know her, Exene was (and still is) the lead singer of the influential Los Angeles punk band known as "X". In her heyday:

The most surprising defection from the music world's liberal orthodoxy since The Velvet Underground's Moe Tuckerjoined the Tea Party....

Want to know who the real punks and the true rebels are in the music world today? Look and see which ones come out against Obama. The rest of them are just desperate poseurs, more interested in sucking off the guy who might get them their next record deal than actually standing for anything outside themselves...

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

What really jumps out at you here - the words "Obama ad", or the question about Mitt Romney being a perennial tax dodger? Google knows, of course - they make their living this way. And in a similar vein, and on the same subject, Yahoo goes inflammatory as well:

Is Sununu questioning Obama's birth certificate here? Is he engaging in racism? No, actually, he's trying to respond to the bullshit above, while Yahoo tries to put the worst faceon Romney and Sununu as possible:

...the former New Hampshire governor, who has emerged as one of Romney's most aggressive defenders, slammed Obama's campaign for suggesting Romney might have committed a "felony" for misstating his role at Bain Capital. [Where's the word "allegedly" here? Did Romney ever misstate his role? Why is Yahoo simply working this story from the Democratic angle? And Why I am asking such stupid questions?]

But Sununu issued a nearly equal counterpunch, telling reporters Obama "comes out of that murky political world in Chicago where politician and felony has become synonymous." [Not quite equal to a felony charge from the Chief Executive, now is it?]

Still, Sununu added, "I am shocked that the president introduced the word 'felon' into the political discourse." [How dare he continue to criticize the president!!!]

Sununu seemed to take it a step further, telling reporters at one point, "I wish this president would learn how to be an American."

Still,[!] Sununu was back on the attack seconds later. Asked about a new Obama ad that suggests Romney won't release additional years of his tax returns because they might show he didn't pay taxes, the former governor trashed the Obama camp as "stupid."

"If (Romney) didn't pay taxes, you don't think the IRS would be knocking on his door? The IRS would have knocked at his door, and we would know all about it," Sununu said. "The Obama campaign has once again demonstrated that they are clearly and unequivocally a bunch of liars."

Most honest people -and even many liberal outlets - seem to agree that the Obama campaign's use of the word "felony", and their four-Pinocchio attack ads, have crossed the bounds of deceny. Yet Yahoo seems to believe that Republicans, by refuting these claims, are the ones out of bounds.

Unbelieveable. And ABC, rather than leading with some unbiased reporting, is following the Yahoo cue:

Over the span of three minutes, ABC featured Barack Obama's attacks three separate times for 35 seconds. Reporter Jake Tapper showcased two more right-leaning talking heads chiding Romney. That's a total of five voices piling on the candidate. Only a single clip of conservative Mary Matalin appeared as a rebuttal.

Even though Romney talked to ABC's Jon Karl on Friday, there were no clips of the presumptive nominee. However, The President was featured three times...

There's nothing I'd put past liberal Hollywood, and I don't believe in coincidence, so I view this story with a wary eye:

This summer's much-anticipated Hollywood blockbuster, "The Dark Knight Rises," is getting an unusual boost from Democrats and other foes of Mitt Romney who are eager to tie the Gotham crushing villain to the GOP presidential candidate...

"Bane" is the terrorist in the new movie who drives the caped crusader out of semi-retirement in the final Batman movie. Democrats, who believe they have Romney on the ropes over the president's assault on his leadership at Bain Capital, said the comparisons are too rich to ignore.

"It has been observed that movies can reflect the national mood," said Democratic advisor and former Clinton aide Christopher Lehane. "Whether it is spelled Bain and being put out by the Obama campaign or Bane and being out by Hollywood, the narratives are similar: a highly intelligent villain with offshore interests and a past both are seeking to cover up who had a powerful father and is set on pillaging society," he added.

Hmmm....

Well, Bane first appearedin 1993 ("Batman: Vengeance of Bane #1"), and I doubt there was anyone at DC who had the foresight to predict that the mild-mannered Mormon manager of an anonymous private equity firm would run for president twenty years later.

Furthermore, it appears as if director Christopher Nolan had been dedicated to working Bane into this final Batman sequel as early as 2008, but certainly no later than winter of 2009 - certainly not yet the winter of Obama's discontent, and still a time when the president seemed, at least to his allies, invincible.

Born into a life sentence for the crimes of his father, he was raised from birth within the harsh prison known as Peña Duro (“Hard Rock”), in the Caribbean Republic of Santa Prisca. He was named Bane by the warden after his first murder as an adolescent, and as he grew to adult hood he became the most feared and respected inmate, the "king" of Pena Duro... the Warden attempted to rid himself of Bane, and...injected Venom into Bane, almost killing him...Believing him to be dead, Bane was tossed into the sea, where he freed himself. Returning to the prison, Bane held the Warden hostage while escaping by means of a helicopter...

Mitt Romney shares tender moment with Barack Obama?

Mitt Romney, as we are told endlessly, was born into wealth, not prison. He has never dabbled with drugs, killed anyone, attempted any hostage-takings, and has no known offshore holdings in any Caribbean prisons. Well, none that we know of, anyway.

Sir Edmund Dorrance, aka King Snake, is a British native who first distinguished himself in the Royal Artillery (a corps of the British Army). He and some friends then became mercenaries, offering their professional expertise to various anti-communist rebels, and made considerable money in doing so. While in Santa Prisca working with local rebels, his camp was taken by surprise by government commandos and Edmund blinded by gunfire. He fled the country, leaving for dead a female rebel that he had slept with...He kills without conscience and has earned the title of "the most dangerous man alive". The King Snake is also blind but has made it an asset rather than a handicap, as he has honed all of his other senses to an uncanny degree. He uses the dark as his weapon.

"George Romney IS...King Snake"

Seems like the comparisons being made by the Democrats here are quite a stretch. The only comparison one can fairly make is that both Bane's dad and Mitt's dad are wealthy, and that Bane sounds like...Bain.

Makes the birthers seem downright sane in comparison. One wonders what the Democrats are thinking here, in believing they can get America convinced that Mitt Romney is the equal of a comic book villain because he worked for a company that sounds like the bad guy's name. Are they really that childishly simple?

Or do they all buy into the belief of Rolling Stone'sMatt Taibbi, who describes Mitt Romney thusly:

"...not merely unlikable, and not merely a fatuous, unoriginal hack of a politician, but also a genuinely repugnant human being, a grasping corporate hypocrite with so little feel for how to get along with people that he has to dream up elaborate schemes just to try to pander to the mob."